"When you mentioned that Crafters don't tend to make as much bread, it occurred to me that you might not have tried something like this," Vesherti mentions. "Flatbreads are popular because they're easy to eat, but you can still get nice flavor combinations."

The ingredient combinations are new, but 'bread with stuff on it' is familiar, it's the sort of thing that a Crafter with a breadmaking setup (such as him) might make when they ended up with more bread than they really wanted to eat.

He orders a couple of slices of date-and-nut bread as a safe tasty option plus an extra for the crow, and tries the honey and red pepper (inedibly spicy) and cheese and spinach (very tasty, hopefully the cheese will agree with him) as well before indicating that he's ready to head home.

Vesherti nods and leads him the rest of the way back to his house, finishing off his own cheese and spinach slice.

"I know you had mentioned this evening might be a good time to talk via ansible with your friend. Would you like to see if they're available now, or should I leave and let you be alone?"

Yeah, sure, she probably is.

He heads inside to get the ansible and craft up some paper to write notes about the day.

And by the time he gets back the ansible already has a note on it:

Hello Helper guide!

Hello Traveler's friend!

I know Crafters don't really do this, but Helpers tend to have personal symbols rather than personal color schemes. Mine is Vesherti, in case you need to tell me apart from other Helper guides.

Traveler didn't tell me much about you, except that you're a fleshcrafter, but I'm quite excited to meet another Crafter; would you be willing to tell me a little about yourself?

I don't mind telling you things but I'm not sure what you want to know - I'm a body-modification and medical fleshcrafter, and I've known Farstrider for about a dozen years now and we're pretty close friends; I don't travel because I have responsibilities in my territory but I like hearing about his travels and having a place he can visit and be comfortable when he's in the area, and I try to look out for him and give him advice when he needs it. I'm not sure how useful I'll be with the cross-world stuff (though I'm willing to try of course), I'm more concerned about my friend being stuck away from his species.

Ah, that makes sense. We're trying to do our best to be good hosts, but I'm sure it will be a bit hard on him no matter what we do, just because of the difference from what he's used to. I'm glad he has a friend looking out for his interests as well.

Is there anything that you're acutely worried about? Or perhaps suggestions for how we could better make him feel welcome?

Has he discussed how Crafters handle sex, at all?

Vesherti suddenly has a new record for "scariest question I've been asked as a diplomat", narrowly beating out "So your people had insurance for the polonium shipment, right?". He takes a half-second to mentally steady himself before replying.

No, the topic hasn't come up. I do think Helper attitudes toward nudity must be a bit different, since Traveler was surprised to see some people swimming, but I just made a note of it and moved on.

He tries to think of a reasonable follow-up question, but the space of all possible concerns here is too big for him to assume. Hopefully this is a 'sex is a delicate topic because people get hormonal about it, so I wanted to make sure you were clear on things' sort of scenario and not a 'Crafters have telepathic sex pollen, so mark that on your calendar' sort of scenario.

Okay; that's not surprising, he's pretty shy about it. Is it something you're comfortable talking about? I do think I should discuss it with someone but it's not too urgent.

There's a pause of a few seconds, and then she adds

I do have standing permission from him to talk about this, by the way.

Ah, good. I'm perfectly comfortable talking about sex, but not about talking about someone else's sex life without their permission. I think most Helpers around here feel the same, although social customs around sex are one of the things that varies from area to area.

Most Crafters don't actually think about it very much, the majority of us just have a libidinous phase as teenagers and young adults and then grow out of it. Some of us don't grow out of it, though, and I'm hoping that's the case with you, too, since he didn't and I expect it to go badly in the long run if he can't find anyone compatible over there.

Oh, interesting! Yes, Helpers never grow out of wanting sex. Most of us start wanting it in our teens and never stop, although there are some people who never start wanting it. Unlike many other mammals, we're fertile (and libidinous) year-round.

You mentioned Traveler was shy around sex; what exactly do you mean by that?

I consider most Crafters pretty shy around sex, to be clear, he's a little more so than most of us but only a little - he won't want to talk about it or directly admit to wanting it.

Hmm. So Helpers have this idea called 'consent' that it has just occurred to me you might not need because of your territoriality instincts.

Since sex can be very intimate and brain-engaging, Helpers have generally agreed that people who want to have sex should specifically, positively say that, so that nobody is hurt by being involved in sex when they don't want to be. Most Helpers will be very reluctant to do anything sexual with someone who won't talk about it. But it can't just be a body-language thing, it has to be a communication method that involves words (Crafting counts).

So when you say 'won't want to talk about it', do you mean that he'll find talking about it momentarily aversive, but would (in your opinion) endorse talking about it after he's recovered socially? Or do you mean that he will have a problem talking about it even with potential sexual partners?

I'm currently thinking I could summarize what you told me and some basic information about how Helpers find partners and have sex in a letter, and then leave so that he can read it without being self-conscious about anyone seeing his reaction to the information.

He's fine with expressing that he wants things as part of sex itself, that's how Crafters being able to touch each other works in general. And talking to him about it as a general thing should be fine, as long as you don't suggest that you think it's relevant to him personally, that's the part he's shy about. I don't expect giving him time to help, he's not going to get less shy on a conversational time scale. It might be useful for you to explain it to me and me to explain it to him, though, he's less shy with people he knows well.

Huh. Alright.

Well, social customs around sex do vary from place to place. But generally there are generally two ways that it can work: as part of an existing relationship, or just on its own.

In the context of an existing relationship: if you know someone well as a friend, you can just ask whether they're interested in having sex. Usually you'll know your friends well enough to know how they'll respond. Helpers distinguish between relationships that involve companionship, romance, long-term commitments, and sex. Any relationship can have any subset of those; it's up to the people involved to talk about what they want.

Helpers looking to establish new relationships often start by meeting their friends' friends, or using our pebbleclinker network to find people with shared interests and then seeing if they like them.

Outside the context of an existing relationship: Some people either want sex without any long-term entanglements, or prefer for their relationships to start from sex and then branch out. In either case, there are a few ways to find people with compatible interests:

- Wearing the local social signalling color for "I am open to being asked about romance/sex" (in most of this continent that is pink)
- Using the pebbleclinker network. There are places on it that you can put up a description of what you want (usually along with pictures) and browse other people's entries to find someone who you're interested in. Then you usually exchange letters and talk about what you want.
- Going to a physical meetup location. There are places in the city where people looking for sex congregate, to make it easier to find each other. In this city, it's the little area north of the river marked out by pink and white flags.
- Finding someone who will exchange value-objects for sex. There are people who will have any kind of sex you'd like in exchange for value-objects. You can look them up on the pebbleclinker-directory-of-local-places-to-trade-for-things, or by going to a shared building where they hang out.

Once you've found one or more people who want to have sex by one of those methods, the next step is generally to talk about what kind of sex you want to have. I'm not sure what the exact meaning of the Crafter word is, but our word for 'sex' is really a broad category of related activities. Things Helpers might be interested in include: touching each others' genitals with hands, genitals, mouths, or other body parts; kissing; binding someone so it's hard for them to move/being bound; causing someone non-permanantly-injurious pain/receiving pain; watching other people do any of these things; making someone almost orgasm but not quite for an extended period; giving someone a complicated and specific set of instructions to follow carefully; and many other things. Any given Helper usually has a fairly-stable subset of things that they enjoy.

Because 'sex' is such a broad category, it's important to establish what subset of it each person is interested in. Then, the people involved go and do the activities that they've agreed on.

Frequently, people will develop preferred sexual partners over time, and get to know what they want, so the 'discussion' part can become very abbreviated — "Do you want to have sex in our usual way? Yes." Sometimes, as I mentioned, that relationship will develop into a romantic, committed, or companionate one over time.

Vesherti thinks for a moment about whether he's missed anything.

The parts that change from place to place are mostly the signalling colors involved, and local expectations around what kinds of relationships are the expected default. But because Helpers don't know a lot about Crafters, people are unlikely to assume that the defaults apply.

Does that raise any immediate questions?

That all sounds pretty workable. How much does going to a meetup location imply that someone is looking for sex? How does gender apply, for Helpers?

Hmm. Going to a meetup location is definitely more common if you're looking for sex, but there are people who go just to enjoy the events there. If I were talking to someone in that area, I would probably expect it to be as likely as not that they were there specifically looking for sex in some way? Certainly nobody would find it strange if someone went to check it out and see what was going on there before deciding whether it was for them.

For gender — gender is one of those things that Helpers have lots of different contradictory opinions about. Generally, there are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neutral. A small fraction of the population is 'non-trinary' and has something else going on. People are usually attracted to some subset of those genders; for example, I'm not really attracted to women. It's fairly common to be attracted to people of every gender, though. There's no real way to know who someone is attracted to unless they tell you, though.

Pebbleclinker profiles often include that information, and some meetup locations have symbols you can use to indicate, although I think our local one doesn't.

That all sounds like it'll work - maybe not well, but his preferred strategy doesn't work all that often for him here, either, and he's mostly been fine. Thanks for your help.

Certainly! I'm happy to help.

If he wouldn't mind you telling me, you could tell me his preferred strategy; it's possible that we could change how we do things to accommodate it.

He mostly just looks impressed or hopeful at guys he likes the looks of and waits to see if they show interest. That's not entirely because he's shy, either, he likes being approached.

Well, if he did that while wearing pink it would work to some extent.

Okay; I'll mention to him that the two of us discussed some information about Helpers he might prefer to hear from you and he should ask.

Were there other things you wanted to talk about while we're both here? I'm not sure whether you wanted to talk to me just to relay your (welcome) advice about how to better welcome Traveler or whether you wanted to talk about other things as well.

I don't have anything else in mind to talk about but he hasn't told me how his outing today went yet, if anything came up that you want to ask about I'm a reasonable option.